Two Homes, One Medicaid Application: Florida Snowbirds and Residency

Meet Ed and Ginny: a familiar Florida story

Ed and Ginny are a composite couple I use to illustrate a situation I see often in my practice, not an actual client. Ed is 80, Ginny is 78, and for the better part of two decades they've split their year between a condo in Ormond Beach and the house in Ohio where they raised their family. Six months here, six months there. Ohio driver's licenses, Ohio doctors for half the year, but increasingly Florida has felt like home.

Then Ed has a fall, and it becomes clear he needs nursing home care. Ginny calls me with a version of a question I hear all the time: which state do we apply in, and what happens to the house we're not living in? It's a fair question, and it deserves a straight answer.

Florida Medicaid requires one state, chosen affirmatively

Medicaid is a joint federal-state program, and each state runs its own long-term care Medicaid eligibility process. Benefits do not follow you across state lines, and there is no such thing as being enrolled in both Florida and Ohio at once. A couple who genuinely splits time has to pick one.

Florida does not require a minimum number of days of residency before you apply, but it does require proof that Florida is your principal residence at the time of application. In practice, that means things like:

• A Florida driver's license or state ID
• Florida voter registration
• Filing as a Florida resident for tax and homestead exemption purposes
• Physical presence in Florida when the application is filed

For Ed and Ginny, the decision was really already half made. They wanted to stay near their daughter, who lives outside Daytona Beach, and Ed's care needs meant they weren't going back to Ohio for the winter. Once they made Florida their true home base, on paper and in fact, Florida became the state to apply in.

Why both homes cannot be exempt at the same time

This is the part that surprises a lot of families. Medicaid's asset rules exempt one primary residence, the one where the applicant lives or intends to return to, or where a spouse or qualifying dependent relative resides. Florida applies a homestead exemption to that one property up to a federally set equity cap that is adjusted periodically. If Ed and Ginny's Florida condo is under that cap and Ginny is living there, it can be treated as exempt.

The Ohio house, however, is a different story. Once Florida is the couple's declared home, the Ohio property is a second home, and second homes are countable assets under Florida Medicaid's asset test, full stop, unless a specific exception applies. It doesn't matter that they lived there for thirty years, or that it's paid off, or that it holds decades of memories. Medicaid looks at current use and current declared residency, not history.

What to do with the second home: sell, rent, or transfer

Once a property is identified as countable, families generally have a few paths, and each carries different tradeoffs:

• Sell it. This converts real estate into cash, which is still countable, but it's straightforward and often the cleanest option if the couple has no attachment to keeping the property long-term. The proceeds then need to be addressed through spend-down planning or protected strategies (which I cover in our nursing-home-cost and Medicaid-eligibility guides).
• Rent it out at genuine fair market value. Florida Medicaid rules allow certain income-producing real estate to be treated differently than a vacant second home. This is not a loophole for parking assets with family at a token rent. The rental has to reflect real, comparable market rates for the area, and the arrangement has to be documented as a legitimate landlord-tenant relationship. Done properly, this can keep the property from being counted as an available asset, but it takes real planning and ongoing compliance, not a one-time decision.
• Transfer it, carefully. Gifting or transferring the home to a child or into certain trusts is possible, but it runs headlong into Florida's five-year look-back period. Any uncompensated transfer made within five years of a Medicaid application can trigger a penalty period that delays eligibility. This is exactly why timing matters so much, and why waiting until a crisis is underway to transfer property rarely works the way families hope.

Coordinating documents across two states, and Florida's advantages

Snowbird families often have estate planning documents, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives drafted years ago in their northern home state. Once Florida becomes the primary residence, it's worth having those documents reviewed under Florida law. Florida has its own statutory requirements for durable powers of attorney (Chapter 709, Florida Statutes) and healthcare surrogate designations (F.S. § 765.202), and a document valid in Ohio isn't always administered smoothly by a Florida hospital, bank, or nursing home when time is short.

There's a real upside to consolidating in Florida beyond Medicaid. Florida has no state income tax, and the homestead exemption under Article X, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution, along with the Save Our Homes assessment cap (F.S. § 193.155), can meaningfully protect a retiree's Florida home from both creditors and runaway property tax increases. For a lot of the snowbird families I work with, the Medicaid conversation is what finally prompts them to formalize what they'd already decided in their hearts: Florida is home.

How this played out for Ed and Ginny

In our fictional couple's case, the path was fairly clear once they looked at it honestly. Ginny wasn't going to keep maintaining two households while managing Ed's care, and neither of them wanted the Ohio house sitting empty. They updated their Florida driver's licenses and voter registration, filed for the Florida homestead exemption on the Ormond Beach condo where Ginny would continue living, and began the process of selling the Ohio house rather than trying to manage it as a rental from a distance.

Because they came to me well before Ed's care needs became urgent, we had time to plan the sale and address the proceeds properly, rather than scrambling during a five-year look-back review. Their new Florida power of attorney and healthcare surrogate documents replaced the older Ohio versions, so Ginny could act for Ed without friction at the nursing home or the bank. None of this was dramatic. It was mostly paperwork, timing, and a clear-eyed decision about which state they actually lived in.

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice, nor does reading it create an attorney-client relationship. Florida estate, elder, probate, and real estate law are fact-specific and change over time. Consult a licensed Florida attorney about your individual circumstances. Arthur Simpson, Esq. is licensed to practice law in the State of Florida. Attorney advertising.